It’s true that there are positive uses for the internet.
Consider the case of Kelli Tarin. She went to Facebook for assistance after discovering what might be a pest problem. Thousands of comments were left for the mother of three, expressing everything from a desire to offer assistance to a simple want to be informed about her circumstances.
She eventually figured out the solution, but not before laughing heartily.
Tarin sent a request for assistance from other members of the Homemaking Tips Facebook group in August 2023.
She had just moved into a rental home in west Texas with her family when they came onto something that made her call the landlord and every pest control business she could think of all the time.
“Anyone know what this could be? I have found two piles of these. Only in my daughters room. I clean it almost every day. This Is something that happened QUICK,” she wrote alongside a photo of a pile of what she described as looking like “coffee grounds.”
Many people were drawn to her article and tried to help her with her issue.
“Put a camera up and see how it’s getting there,” one person suggested.
“I can’t really tell but I’m being so honest if there little ‘flying ants’ their a type of termites. I had them in my first house as an ‘adult’ and they would pop up and I’d vacuum them, and then they’d pop right back up,” someone else offered.
Another individual, meanwhile, merely remarked that it was “rat poop.”
Tarin revised her initial post in response to the numerous suggestions that people kept making.
She said that she would not be allowing her kid to sleep in her bedroom for the time being.
“We called TWO pest control companies yesterday. Literally BOTH of them said they have never seen anything like this. Ever,” she wrote. “If it were terminates, they said the droppings or whatever they leave behind is completely different. What’s left behind is literally crunchy. Almost seed like. It’s very strange.”
Tarin rationally explained why it wasn’t any of the potential pests as she went through the list, which included mice, roaches, and bats. Despite finding mice to be “believable” as the culprits, she was aware that the brown particles in the piles were not mouse droppings.
She got pest treatment and her landlord came out to her property, but she didn’t start to think more critically about things until she saw a comment under one of her Facebook posts.
“I red [sic] a comment from someone that said they kids lavender bear busted opened and this was inside. Sure enough, when I picked up toys from here, there was a lavender blush [sic] bear in the pile.”
After picking up the bear, Tarin threw it away right away because he thought it was “infested.”
She glanced at the bear again, though, as her curiosity got the better of her. There was a hole in the stuffed animal.
“I poured out the contents and these beads were inside!!!I have laughed for 30 mins. Imagine my relief.“
